Saturday, January 3, 2009

Seven Pounds

Last night, my wife and I went to see Seven Pounds, which is a story of redemption through personal sacrifice. The story was deep, and often hard to follow, but that was the crux of what Will Smith's character hoped to accomplish. He wanted to do good for good people through his sacrifice as someone guilty of a grave sin. In one sense, I am thankful that forgiveness does not require a pound of flesh to be redeemed. In another, I wonder how much better the world could be if all people who had made such a terrible mistake felt remorseful enough to try and make up for it.

I do believe that forgiveness does involve making things right - making restitution in a sense - but some might argue his method on how might take it too far. Perhaps it bordered on "an eye for an eye" a little too much.

My thoughts on this movie are far from hashed out, though. I am simply putting it out there. I like movies that make me think. This one definitely had us in a mode of thoughtful consideration when we left. It is one of those great movies best watched once, though perhaps a repeat viewing in a few years would be all right.

-- Robert

P.S. Anyone wanting to see this movie because of this post, check out the service that counts swear words and other bothersome elements in case something it it might appear offensive. I wasn't offended, but I wanted to issue that warning.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm going to totally brag and say that Jude and I had this plot all figured out, in its entirety, by about the 20-25 minute mark. :-D We knew nothing about it ahead of time and we loved it.

Robert said...

Oh, I would say I knew before the scene early on when he calls the police what he was going to do. It might not have been that early because it was certainly weird to watch him in the first few scenes.